Building Everyday Anti-Fascism

Ibrahima Barry. Azzeddine Soufiane. Khaled Belkacemi. Mamadou Tanou Barry. Abdelkrim Hassane. Boubaker Thabti. On January 29, 2017, these six men were murdered while praying at Québec City’s Islamic Cultural Centre, and five others were seriously injured. While the horror of that night became headline news, it was not the first time the centre had been subjected to threats, intimidation, and debasement. A severed pig’s head was previously delivered to the mosque’s doorstep with a note reading “bon appétit”; yet, it was only after the murders that police began to investigate these crimes seriously. Unsurprisingly, the man who brought this terror, Alexandre Bissonnette, was described by mainstream media as decidedly not a terrorist, but rather as a loner with a thick skin, a “good kid”; meanwhile, his friends called his radicalization mysterious, an anomaly, and an enigma. His online activity, however, revealed that he supported the far-right populist and xenophobic politics of Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen, celebrated the death of Fidel Castro, and that he regularly “trolled” refugee advocates with anti-immigrant and anti-feminist statements.[1]

While the attack sent shockwaves across the country, it was apparent well before the election of Donald Trump that racism, Islamophobia, anti-semitism, and xenophobia were on the rise. Whether this trend—alongside increased surveillance of people’s lives and the normalization of authoritarian political leaders—constitutes the rise of fascism is a moot point. The similarities are too striking to ignore and far-right movements are gaining traction far too quickly for us to dawdle in conceptual debates. Fascist groups have been mobilizing monthly hate rallies poorly disguised as “free speech” events in cities across Canada. Alongside these public expressions of hate has been the rise in popularity of the right-wing “Canadian-Breitbart” website, The Rebel (colloquially known as Rebel Media). The popular, liberal response to these chilling trends on both sides of the border has largely been to trust constitutional rights to free speech and to let “Love Trump Hate.” While there have been several counter-protests challenging these fascist gatherings, the overall organizing response by the Left has been quite minimal compared to the growing strength that some fascist groups are displaying.

What do we make of this current conjuncture? The rise of an emboldened far-right populism in Canada is being met by a surge of liberal outrage that has brought non-politicized folks to their first protests. Trump’s inauguration, for instance, was overshadowed by the Women’s March on Washington, which inspired rallies across the globe. In fact, the march in Toronto drew one of the biggest crowds in recent memory. But while the Washington and Toronto rallies highlighted a number of speakers involved in various radical (and not so radical) movements, they neither explicitly addressed imperialism and white supremacy, nor expressed an explicit interest in forming a sustained resistance or movement against all that Trump signified. In contrast, in response to the US travel ban and the shootings in Québec, radical organizers from Toronto coordinated a National Day of Action Against White Supremacy and Islamophobia. Yet, the participation was significantly smaller compared to the Women’s March. Notably, more militant anti-fascist organizing committed to a “no platform”[2] politics has received little sympathy from more moderate Left activists.

This political moment presents serious challenges for the revolutionary Left. There is a rise in violent, far-right, fascist activity that mobilizes according to a populist “common sense”: that the West is declining, and that immigrants, particularly Muslims, pose an existential threat. The mainstream “debate” on how to challenge fascism and fascist rhetoric is dominated by different claims to the right to free speech, showing that liberal and social democratic groups are content to respond to white supremacy with dialogue and non-confrontational actions. Those who attempt to deny hate speech a platform are often derided as “no better than the fascists.”

Take, for instance, the mobilization of the Canadian Coalition of Concerned Citizens (CCCC),[3] a right-wing group that regularly protests in front of Toronto mosques. On March 4, 2017, the CCCC called for a national day of action to protest the federal government’s anti-Islamophobia motion M103.[4] In response, counter-rallies were organized across the country with the explicit purpose of dominating the public space to discourage the hateful rallies. In Toronto, a rally was organized 30 minutes ahead of the CCCC’s own event at the same location. Hundreds of supporters and a small group of antifa[5] activists attended the counter-rally, while just over 30 far-right protesters from the CCCC arrived spouting Islamophobic and white nationalist rhetoric. Even though the counter-protesters vastly outnumbered the CCCC supporters, only the small antifa contingent moved to disrupt the racist rally and confront the white nationalists in attendance by attempting to destroy their sound system. The counter-rally organizers, conversely, encouraged participants to avoid confrontation and told counter-protesters to turn their backs to the CCCC and the antifa group, to focus on their own speakers, and to chant louder. Offering no support for the “no platform” tactics of antifa opened up a window for police to then surround the CCCC rally and establish a perimeter to protect them, ultimately enabling the group to continue to preach their hate and propaganda for over an hour.[6] Subsequent CCCC rallies and antifa counter-rallies have had varying levels of support in the weeks since, but it seems the initial strength in numbers has dwindled.

The lack of support towards the antifa activists is disappointing, but not surprising. It is understandable that some people— especially those from marginalized social locations—will hesitate to participate in confrontational tactics with fascists or the police. Still others remain invested in a common liberal narrative that claims that we must allow fascists space to express their opinions; that surely our message will win in the mythical marketplace of ideas; and, that to shut them down brings us down to their level. This narrative sometimes even seeps into revolutionary Left spaces, which leads us to constantly be on the defensive and unable to articulate a revolutionary politics in the face of pro-fascist activity.

We want to explore this disconnect between segments of the revolutionary Left and anti-fascist organizing. While there is a growing nostalgia for the 1980s and 1990s Anti-Racist Action days of anti-fascism, it is apparent that some activists don’t understand the politics, tactics, and importance of radical anti-fascist organizing. Some minimize the impact of fascist organizing and, rather than responding, would prefer to organize in different communities. Others dismiss the articulation of antifa, with its punk aesthetic and often hyper-masculine and predominantly white make-up. In what follows we tackle these issues and encourage organizers to recognize that “no platform” anti-fascist tactics are a strategic component of a larger Left movement that should be based on building hegemonic power against liberal and fascist “common sense.” We begin with an overview of what fascism and anti-fascism look like in Canada today. Next, we address the limits of liberal anti-fascism in Canada to reveal the connections between liberal democracy, “common sense,” and the continued incubation of a fascist politics. In the final section, we reflect on the connections and fissures between antifa activists and other segments of the radical Left and conclude with some open-ended, but strategically oriented questions to ignite discussion amongst the radical Left.

Canada’s Far-Right and Anti-Fascist Defense Today

In the early-20th century, KKK groups set fire to crosses and to Catholic churches in Québec and the Maritime provinces. The group gained popularity among the protestant Orangemen in Ontario, and stoked racial hatred against immigrants in British Columbia. In Saskatchewan the KKK had wide-ranging support across the province, with Klansmen being openly elected to public office.[7] This history lives on in contemporary political projects in Canada, as current far-right organizations revive and rejuvenate many of the Klan’s beliefs and campaigns: the KKK claimed to defend white womanhood against immigrant barbarism, asserted that immigrants stole Canadian jobs by working for less, and argued extensively for selective immigration and explicit policies of assimilation—including the elimination of Native rights. They defended hate speech as free speech and established their own news presses claiming they weren’t treated fairly by mainstream media. And, as was the case in Saskatchewan, the KKK successfully mobilized populist resentment against the establishment politics of the liberal government.[8]

It would be a mistake to paint contemporary mobilizations as a direct mirror of these earlier far-right manifestations, but the continuities are important to highlight. In his book Against the Fascist Creep, Alexander Reid Ross talks about the power of cross-class alliances uniting elites and white workers against the “parasites” of society.[9] Fascist organizers respond to white working class resentment by mobilizing myths of a once great nation, where roles of gender and race were fixed and never questioned. The logics of racial/national superiority in settler states are dependent upon what J. Sakai refers to as “the mythology of the white masses.”[10] This mythology has several components: that early settlers were poor convicts and workers migrating in search of freedom; that they held the values of individualism and egalitarianism; and that they contributed a significant portion of their labour in settling the land and developing it.

While the scapegoats may have changed, the ideology remains. We see these beliefs espoused by both fascists and the alt-right. Although today’s far-right arguably has far greater reach due to the accessibility and popularity of their well funded and well-resourced media platforms. Rebel Media, for instance, claims to have three million subscribers and is directly connected with Tory leadership candidate Andrew Scheer’s campaign.[11] Although their self-proclaimed numbers are disputable, it is clear that they have the capacity to mobilize. For instance, their online petition against motion M103 quickly garnered 30,000 signatures, and their subsequent “Rally for Free Speech” on February 15, 2017 in Toronto was far from a fringe gathering, attracting hundreds of people, even after anti-fascist protesters forced a change of venue. Thousands more followed the event online and mainstream Conservative Party candidates Chris Alexander, Pierre Lemieux, and Kellie Leitch spoke at the rally. It’s not a stretch to say that Rebel Media’s popularity and close party ties make it a kind of Breitbart North, whose wide-ranging circulation and popularity ought to be seriously considered.

Although Rebel Media capitalizes on populist, ultra-conservative politics and redeploys political arguments common to fascist movements, it does this in a muted, mainstream fashion. At the “Rally for Free Speech,” for instance, seemingly mundane displays of patriotism, waving Canadian flags and singing the national anthem, were accompanied by war-mongering “clash of civilizations” rhetoric. Leitch congratulated the room for being made up of “severely normal people,” while “Rebel-Commander” Ezra Levant informed attendees that hatred of Islam was a natural, valid human emotion. On its website, Rebel Media denounces the “culture war,” “social justice warriors,” and “political correctness” and argues that leftists, along with mainstream liberal politicians, have contributed to a decline in Canadian identity and values in favour of moral ambivalence, emasculation, and “jihadism.” Speaking on behalf of regular, “common sense” Canadians, Rebel spokespersons vehemently support and defend Canadian militarism, police institutions and law and order, the expansion of the extractive industry, Christian values, and conservative gender norms. And when they are criticized for distorting the truth in their denial of climate change, their generalizing accusations of Islamic terrorism, or their anti-feminist defense of men’s rights and transphobia, they cry foul and say that it’s an attack on their freedom of speech.

Rebel Media is not an anomaly. Much of the recent organizing of the far-right has been coordinated through online forums and groups, utilizing tactics of intimidation and spreading their hateful messages through memes, blog posts, and status updates. While far-right fascists and neo-Nazis have always used online forums (e.g. Stormfront) to spread their hate literature and to discuss rallies and actions, their current configuration is remarkably public and open. Yet, emergent far-right groups have also self-consciously tried to distance themselves from fascism, Nazism, and accusations of endorsing or engaging in violence. While these gestures are rhetorical, they have nonetheless emboldened the far-right and led to increased media attention and coverage. Canadian chapters of the Soldiers of Odin (SOO), for instance, have appeared across the country in urban and rural communities.

What has been the response on the Left to the rise of far-right organizing? On the one hand, the far-right’s online presence has been challenged on the Left by counter-groups and forums that document far-right organizing, violence, threats, and internal squabbles. Similarly, committed anti-fascists have developed their own groups to share information and skills on how to track and disrupt the far-right. There have also been anti-fascist self-defence and de-escalation trainings for organizers and communities under attack. Further still, closed groups of committed antifas have emerged across the country to directly confront and shut down fascists, some reviving the strategies and tactics of Anti-Racist Action. These groups have been more visible and present at anti-racist rallies, have torn down fascist propaganda, postered anti-fascist messages, and have distributed informational leaflets at rallies. Notably, in the Peel Region a group of antifa activists helped expel fascist organizers from a school board meeting, where far-right organizers had recently torn a Quran to protest the inclusion of Muslim prayer space in schools.

While these efforts are important and inspiring, anti-fascism remains marginal on the Left, with only a handful of committed activists actively organizing to shut down hate speech and counter fascist organizing. Similarly, while some connections exist between antifas and other radical social movements, explicit connections and coalitions are rare. What is preventing other social movements from joining the fight? Although this is a difficult question to answer considering the scope of this editorial, we hope that what follows prompts organizers to consider “no platform” tactics as crucial to a revolutionary politics.

Common Sense and the Limits of Liberal Anti-Fascism

There has often been a tension between the role of the state and community responses to fascist organizing. There are points in history where governments were clearly linked to and supported fascist organizing in North America. However, with the rise of human rights and anti-hate legislation in the last few decades, the state has provided a legal and carceral approach to the more violent forms of fascist organizing. This is what M. Testa calls “liberal anti-fascism,” the belief that state institutions—though flawed and in need of reform—are capable of stopping fascism from taking hold.[12] This sentiment has been revealed in several confrontations between fascists and anti-fascists where some activists call in the police to mediate conflict and rely on punitive legislation for protection. For liberal anti-fascists, fascism is an affront to pluralism and tolerance, an unfortunate remnant of outdated prejudices, and the domain of extremist hate groups. However, liberals are willing to tolerate fascist use of public space because they believe that “the public” will ultimately expose the irrationality of fascism through dialogue and debate. Worse still, they often conflate the violence of fascists and militant anti-fascists by arguing that both are equally reprehensible and wholly counter-productive.

For militant anti-fascists, however, fascism is not antithetical to liberalism but an endemic and recurrent feature of it. That is, liberal democracy’s perennial failure to address the concerns of those experiencing disenfranchisement and the brunt of capitalist inequality creates the space for fascism to gain rapid and mass attraction. Fascist groups and populist movements can flare up quickly in times of crisis, with a disguised agenda that reinvigorates overt forms of racism and othering and offers oversimplified solutions to complex structural problems. More importantly, the liberal commitment to dialogue allows fascist ideology to gain a foothold into what Antonio Gramsci calls the “common sense.”

As a Marxist organizer and political prisoner under Mussolini’s fascist regime in Italy, Gramsci theorized the role of culture in capitalist ruling relations. For Gramsci, bourgeois rule is as much about violence and force as it is about the cultural dissemination of ideology. Ideology, here, signifies a collection of folklore, myths, beliefs, and cultural production—the common sense—that reinforces capitalist hegemony and working class subjugation. As Kate Crehan explains, common sense refers to “all those heterogeneous beliefs people arrive at not through critical reflection, but encounter as already existing, self-evident truths.”[13] Ultimately, these seemingly benign and self-evident cultural beliefs are adopted by some elements of the working class even though they reinforce capitalist inequalities that are against their own interests.

Fascist appeals to the white working class often rely upon common sense myths that reinforce racist beliefs about nation and entitlement. As we described above, Kelly Leitch congratulated the supporters of the “Rally for Free Speech” for being severely normal, stoking the conceit that it makes common sense for people to hold racist and Islamophobic feelings given the state of immigration. Here, Himani Bannerji’s understanding of white supremacy and racism are especially useful because common sense racism “takes on a seemingly benign form of what ‘we’ ‘know’ about ‘them,’ meaning a collection of conventional treatment, decorum and common cultural stereotypes, myths, regarding certain social groups.”[14] For Bannerji, common sense

leaves plenty of room for contradictions, myths, guesses and rumours. It is therefore by no means a unified body of knowledge, and as a form of our everyday way of being it is deeply practical in nature .... Whereas clearly stated racism definitely exists, the more problematic aspect for us is this common sense racism which holds the norms and forms thrown up by a few hundred years of pillage, extermination, slavery, colonization and neo-colonization. It is in these diffused normalized sets of assumptions, knowledge, and so-called cultural practices that we come across racism in its most powerful, because pervasive, form.[15]

More than mere beliefs, common sense as culture intertwines with institutions of civil society to normalize the narratives of fascism and reproduce structural barriers (such as borders and gentrification) internal to liberal democracy. These subtle and institutionalized ways of hierarchizing people and controlling “undesirable” groups can be more dangerous than the visible gatherings of fascist protests.

Due to these connections between fascism and liberalism, militant antifascists are skeptical of the liberal capitalist state and its supposed capacity to stop fascism from taking hold. After all, the rise of fascism in the 1930s emerged as much through the ballot box as through the (often state-sanctioned) violent actions of vigilante street gangs and paramilitary. Under these conditions, militant antifascist “no platform” politics are an important and necessary way to reclaim the legitimate use of force against the state, capital, and fascists in order to prevent them from gaining ground and causing more harm. Liberal anti-fascists and leftists more generally need to stop decrying the extra-legal, and at times violent, tactics of militant anti-fascism, and quit fetishizing non-violence on absolutist moral grounds. In distinguishing between fascist and anti-fascist violence, Testa writes,

Fascism is imbued with violence and secures itself politically through the use or threat of it, so it is inevitable that anti-fascists have to countenance some involvement in violence themselves during struggle. This is not to say that anti-fascists should like violence or seek it out in the manner of political hooligans. Far from it, but it is true to say that for many militant anti-fascists violence is an unpleasant method to achieve a greater political goal.[16]

Similarly, Ben Case notes that absolute dismissals of violence are limiting, but so too are absolute defenses of violence as always-already necessary or inherently virtuous when committed by the oppressed. Rather than reinforce either position, he grounds violence in the needs of current social movements to respond to the contemporary moment. It is important to move beyond the violence-nonviolence dichotomy, and instead to think of violence as a constitutive element of a long-term objective.[17]

The greater political goal is not merely physically confrontational but requires a broader mass-movement that develops educational spaces for critical thinking and the building of oppositional power through politics and culture. Anti-fascist organizing has historically coupled physical confrontation with forms of critical consciousness-raising as well as organizing within the workplace. There have also been popular forms of artwork, media, and theatre used in the past to build experiential forms of communication and knowledge about power and capitalism. However, the current antifa makeup is limited insofar as their politics can, at times, be incoherent, and there are valid critiques that hyper-masculine whiteness dominates the scene. Having pointed out the need for multiple forms of resistance, however, the radical Left should accept this moment as an invitation. For experienced activists, this means organizing communities to gain skills, gain confidence, and participate in creative forms of confrontation. Rather than leave the fight to small groups, building analysis and power in different communities will strengthen the confrontation of fascism on multiple sides.

Towards an Anti-Fascist Left

While many radical social movements and frustrated activists often decry the lack of interest by sections of the radical Left, the recent surge in fascist organizing presents a unique and pressing challenge for everyone. Not only are active far-right groups a tangible threat to communities of colour, but their common sense ideologies normalize outright racist, homophobic, transphobic, and sexist ideas while enabling people in positions of power to lament their own supposed victimization and oppression. These twists of logic redeploy the language of equal rights and free speech, in an attempt to slander and doxx militant Leftists. The real danger lies, however, not in the limited appearance of a handful of right-wing agitators, but in their ability to be heard by many and for their hate to be reproduced in the cultural sphere. The popularity of Rebel Media is a testament to these processes, but so too is mainstream liberal coverage that is unable or unwilling to challenge the far-right.
The response of the Left to this contemporary moment needs to be both physically confrontational and ideologically coherent in order to adequately challenge both the violence of the far-right and their mobilization of common sense racism. There is a need, then, to create models of self-defense that also communicate what kind of society we are fighting for. Here, we can look to examples from socialist and anarchist groups that not only physically attacked fascists in the streets, but used various strategies to communicate to communities where the source of oppression and exploitation lay. Building this critical pedagogy also means supporting organizing within, and broad coalitions amongst, the communities under attack.

Part of this strategy would be to re-invest in Left media to directly challenge and counter far-right media platforms like The Rebel. It is not enough to rely upon mainstream liberal media to debate the merits or beliefs of the far-right. In addition, liberal media tends to sensationalize anti-fascist acts of violence, disconnecting them from their political content, while treating fascist violence as merely isolated incidents. Instead, the Left should work to support and develop sophisticated and accessible media sources that challenge the common sense of racialized and gendered capitalist hegemony. Making anti-fascist politics accessible and understandable is essential for building a broad-based mass-movement against fascism and its incubator, liberal democracy.

Part of making anti-fascist politics stronger means contending with the hyper-masculinity and predominant whiteness of antifa spaces. In some respects, this is a result of the historical emergence of antifa from punk subcultures that are themselves often white and male-dominated spaces; in other respects, militant anti-fascist organizing invites a particular kind of white, male, non-disabled subject who is willing/able to engage in physical confrontation. Regardless, while we challenge other radical leftists to engage seriously in the fight against fascism, we cannot ignore the reality that many antifa spaces, like other organizing spaces, can be toxic. Antifa organizing and social spaces that are not sober can also be a barrier for many activists. In addition, issues of sexual and gendered violence must be actively and genuinely engaged with by antifa activists. Rather than be dismissed as secondary issues that fall behind the primary goal of confronting fascists, disability justice, anti-racism, and feminism should be at the forefront of any revolutionary analysis.

Here, communication and coalitions amongst antifa activists and other community organizers is useful. The Left has a mutual interest in confronting fascism and communicating critical anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-oppressive politics. By working together, antifas and other organizers can develop a comprehensive mass-movement that challenges capitalist ideology at multiple levels, including a reflexive critique of harm internal to the Left. Activists should actively challenge fascist ideology and their physical presence, but not lose sight of the ways common sense informs our own conduct.

A “no platform” politics is effective at achieving some of the primary goals of anti-fascism, but it is limited if isolated from radical movements and organizations struggling against capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and border imperialism to create alternative futures. Therefore, anti-fascist organizing is most dangerous when it is connected to and supported by broader networks of already-existing radical movements. Building this relationship requires those engaged in anti-fascist organizing and those involved in more established movements and organizations to make conscious and explicit efforts to support each other. This means showing up in large numbers to support militant anti-fascism in the literal fight against the fascist creep and the metaphorical fight against liberal efforts to stifle and discredit militant action. This also means recognizing that anti-fascism is a necessary but insufficient political solution to the problems of our time. Without conscious efforts to build up infrastructures of resistance, to hone our analysis through popular education, and to enact aspects of the world we want to live in inside the world we have now—in short, without clearly articulating “another politics”—the Left will be mired in endless reactive and crisis-mode organizing.

Looking forward there remain a series of difficult questions for the Left, both theoretical and tactical. What motivates communities to get organized? What kind of public argument or cultural campaign could break through the “free speech” defense, which facilitates fascism, appeals to the state, and reproduces liberal common sense? What tactical lessons for popular campaigning could we learn from the right’s use of social media? In what instances is violent action more or less useful? How do we know when a tactic has been successful? How do we challenge the polarizing response on the Left to antifa uses of strategic violence? Conversely, does antifa violence embolden the far-right? What are the potential negative effects of increasing conflict and violence? How do we defend and support activists who are attacked/doxxed by the far-right?

The answers to these questions require intentional, reflexive, and creative conversations in radical Left spaces. At their core, however, they point to the dual need of denying a platform for fascism while building and proliferating our own in order to build the mass-movement we need.